How to Make Gingerbread House Dough from Scratch

Let’s see how many of you remember this complicated recipe from your childhood:

Take 6 graham crackers, glue them onto a clean milk carton with royal icing, decorate, let dry, and eat.

If you do, maybe you went to elementary school with me. I remember saving up old milk and cream cartons, bringing them in every Christmas, and then making the world’s fastest version of a gingerbread house. While I can’t blame my teachers, this isn’t exactly my idea of Christmas charm nowadays.

Gingerbread houses are so much more than milk cartons and graham crackers.

They’re edible sculptures that transport us back into the roles of Hansel and Gretel (without the witch… and with Santa!). In fact, the story of Hansel and Gretel was the original inspiration for gingerbread houses.

Every year for the past seven years I have gone to see “Gingerbread Lane” at the local Hyatt. I am always amazed by how beautiful and ornate some of the gingerbread houses can be, especially when I read that many of these houses are created by high school students. I’ve never attempted to make a gingerbread house that ornate, but I do love making a more humble version!

In a feeble attempt to balance all the sugary goodness that is used to decorate the house, I wanted to make the gingerbread house dough from scratch. My version of a gingerbread house uses a bit of oat flour and a little less sugar in the dough. But let’s face it, don’t start off your post-Thanksgiving/pre-Christmas diet with a gingerbread house — you’re doomed to end up covered in icing and candy.

The dough is a simple dough to pull together and it can be made ahead of time and chilled.

I prefer to chill my dough for a few hours in the fridge, but if you’re making this a few days in advance, I would throw this into the freezer (make sure to cover it appropriately if freezing). After the dough is made, I roll out it out to about a ¼ inch thickness then cut out my house parts. For this, you can use gingerbread house cookie cutters or simply use a template to cut out your pieces.

This is such a fun project – whether you do this with your kids, your partner, your friends, or even on your own, you’re sure to have a great time acting as architect for a day!

Better candy alternatives for decorating

Although most of us scratch mommies go by the 80/20 rule, we want to provide you with a few ‘better’ candy alternatives for decorating your new ‘from scratch’ gingerbread house: